My mom’s name is Connie Rambeau, but before she married my dad her name was Connie Weston. She’s thirty-seven, one year younger than Dad, and she works as a counselor at the Community Help Center in Brooklyn. When people run out of money, or lose their job or their house, or don’t have electricity because it was shut off by the power company, they go to my mom and she tries to find money for them, or a job, or a place to stay, or whatever they need. It’s a really important job.
I’m telling you this stuff so you know that my mom is normally a good person. Try to remember that, because she might not sound too cool or too good for a while yet.
Anyway, Mom stepped inside the apartment, set her portfolio on a table, and smiled at Dad and me. “Mommy is home, as may be evident by the fact that I’m standing here,” she said. My parents talk funny sometimes. It must be a smart-person thing.
Normally Dad would give Mom a big kiss and ask how her day was, and I’d go give her a hug and listen to how her day was. But Dad and I stayed standing in front of the shipping crate like two goofs. It was beyond dumb, since we weren’t wide enough to hide the entire box. It stuck out on both sides of us.
“Welcome home, honey,” Dad said, clearing his throat.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, feeling my legs wobble.
Mom gave us a curious look and came closer, her eyes moving to the crate. “Was a package just delivered?”
“Nope, no packages were delivered,” my dad said in a jumpy voice. “Right, sport?”
Thanks a big bunch, Dad! I froze, since there was nothing good for me to say. If I said there weren’t any packages delivered, then I’d be a liar. If I told the truth, Dad could get in trouble. So I pretended that my mouth wasn’t working. Wanted to talk but couldn’t.
Mom rolled her eyes, then aimed an arm at the crate. “What is that, a hallucination? Is there or is there not a big wooden box on the floor?”
“Oh, that wooden box,” Dad said, tugging at his blue tie, the one with the tiny dolphins on it. “Just some LCD monitors and motherboards.”
“Monitors? From France?” Mom said, looking like she wasn’t interested in buying the pound of baloney Dad was trying to sell her. “It says the box was shipped from France. It’s right there on the wood!”
“Sure, they’re starting to make outstanding monitors in France,” Dad said, pinching up his face. That was probably another lie. The French are too busy kissing each other to make great monitors.
Mom peered at Dad, and at me, and at the box, and then she frowned and took a step toward the kitchen. But just as I was thinking we’d gotten away with hiding Norman, I heard a weird th-th-th-th-th sound, like the robot was snickering underneath the straw and packing peanuts.
“Did you hear that?” Mom said, no longer aiming herself toward the kitchen.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Dad said. “Did you hear anything, junior?”
Thanks again, Dad! I pretended to be suddenly deaf, to go along with my nonworking mouth.
Mom moved closer to the box.
Th-th-th-th-th, Norman snickered, in his Frenchy robot way.
Mom dipped her head so she was inches from the box, and pushed aside peanuts and straw, searching for the source of the weird sound.
That was when Norman launched himself at my mom in a burning rockets way, wrapping his arms around her and plastering her with kisses. “Maman!” he said, in between kisses. Maman means “Mother” if you’re a French person.
My mom totally wigged out.
“Ah! Get it off of me!” she said, clawing at Norman as he planted kisses all over her face. “Someone help me!”
It was too funny—Dad stood there looking horrified, while Mom looked like she was wrestling with a love-struck octopus. But then it quickly got unfunny.
Mom pried Norman off and flung him away from her. The robot landed on the couch before falling onto the rug, so he wasn’t badly damaged, but one of his eyes came loose, rolling across the floor and stopping near Dad’s “captain’s chair.” The chair is designed to look like Captain Kirk’s chair from Star Trek. It’s not very comfy. Only Dad sits on it.
The sight of the rolling eye didn’t calm Mom down, and was making me feel weird about my own eyes and if they were properly stuck inside their sockets, and how would a kid even check such a thing? Norman was in a heap on the floor, like an unloved doll.
Mom gave Dad the kind of look that, if her eyes were lasers, he’d have twenty holes burned into him. “What have you done this time?” she demanded. Her lower lip quivered, and I thought she might be on the edge of losing it. Why was my mom so upset about Dad’s latest gadget? I wondered, completely clueless.
Before Dad could say anything—I think his mouth was malfunctioning too—Mom stomped across the living room, down the hallway, and into the home office, where she closed the door with a loud wham!
Dad sighed, tapped his fists against each other, and slogged to the office, where he tried to talk my mom into unlocking the door so they could chat. But Mom was giving him the silent treatment.
I gazed at Norman, who was folded in half on the floor, one of his fans whirring. I didn’t know if he was programmed to feel sadness, but boy, did he look like a sad little robot.
“It will be okay,” I told him, but in my head I was seeing him being shipped back to France first thing in the morning.
Maybe that would be for the best, I thought, ditching Norman before he could cause any more trouble. But he looked so darn sad. And he had looked so happy when he saw my mom. . . . I just wasn’t sure what we should do.